Yes, Dan Satterberg, King County Prosecutor, and those that worked with him in the prosecution against me, should be ashamed for letting themselves be played like violins by Dan Satterberg’s major campaign contributors, Boeing and law firm Perkins Coie. (A partner at Perkins Coie, perhaps the chief benefactor of Boeing retainers for defending Boeing against any culpability for their white collar personnel’s crimes, was also head of Satterberg’s campaign for King County Prosecutor.) Their efforts to prevent Boeing criminality from coming to anyone’s attention that might be so ethical that they would want to do something about it that they demonstrated during the prosecution of me for going to the press about Boeing misconduct of the highest order should forever go down as one of the “highest achievements” ever in the annals of the history of King County Prosecutor misconduct.

I do in no way mean to suggest that my personal fate is of any great import, but his attempt, per the very, very ardent wishes of his noted campaign contributors to put blue collar people in prison on trumped up charges for daring to oppose the real and high crimes of Boeing’s numerous white collar criminals is “pay to prosecute” misconduct of the worst possible kind. It’s a corruption of our government that makes Blagovich’s corruption look tame by comparison, as the whole concept of Justice itself is at stake, and not just money, as was the case in that widely publicized case of blatant corruption in Illinois.

But, in King County, Justice is for sale to the biggest campaign contributor or benefactor to the current King County Prosecutor. In King County, Justice is in effect peeking through her blindfold at the amount and source of campaign cash put on the scales she is holding. Those who contribute most receive whatever “justice” they want, even if what they actually want is injustice. In that way, King County Justice is surely blind because of Dan Satterberg’s actions and inaction, as the meaning of justice and injustice are thusly variable for Satterberg if the bidding is high enough.

Surely, even if campaign cash and related powerful people of those donor companies had not come into the way of how the King County Prosecutor’s office interprets “justice” so directly, just the mere fact that Dan Satterberg belongs to a political party that has so steadfastly defended the moneyed elite’s interests over the interests of all other citizens would explain somewhat his bias against unbiased justice in this case. However, there are good Republicans out there, to be sure. Dan Satterberg is just not one of them.

Thankfully, for Dan Satterberg, cases like mine when he has to choose either justice, or inflicting the injustice wanted by his family friends, campaign contributors, and campaign heads, don’t come along too often, and are not covered in the press in sufficient detail, to make clear to the public his office’s sale of justice to the highest bidder. But, then again, perhaps Dan Satterberg doesn’t care about the risks of his own corruption being outed if the money and other rewards for said corruption are high enough. I don’t presume to know, however, what precisely goes through his white collar biased “criminal mind,” however. Those of us interested in true justice (which, of course, doesn’t include Dan Satterberg, as noted) should hope that Dan Satterberg doesn’t successfully keep his “pay to prosecute” corruption hidden from accountability much longer, and this blog is in the spirit of such openness that is needed to end such corruption.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and well before he won election with Boeing’s and Perkins Coie’s money and other help, Dan Satterberg had held absolute power for far too long, even if it was only for the relatively short time between the last King County Prosecutor’s death and his own election. Dan Satterberg breaks no new ground there, even though his corruption of “his” office is unprecedented, except for perhaps for the time before Norm Maleng took office. That Dan Satterberg’s campaign was highly distasteful (at the least) is surely attributable to his Perkins Coie campaign manager and his own “ethics.” I had never before seen a candidate for office try to “surf his way” into office on his predecessor’s coffin. That they had to essentially pry Dan Satterberg from Norm Maleng’s coffin so they could bury it while he had the cameras rolling, in effect, was distasteful, indeed, and while apparently effective with all of Boeing’s and Perkins Coie’s campaign cash to publicize it, I do not want to see any candidate for office stoop so low ever again. But this and Satterberg’s selling of justice to the highest bidder does say much about Dan Satterberg’s “ethics,” I believe. Being thusly so closely associated with the worst people in Boeing management and Boeing Legal does not carry the public connotation it should have, however, even in these days when Boeing management’s unethical antics are perhaps becoming most widely known.

Dan Satterberg could have avoided his office’s corruption by investigating and charging the vastly greater crimes of the company that reported my purported crime of communicating with a reporter in the media. That wasn’t going to happen on Dan Satterberg’s watch, however. His office made no effort to contact me or ask the Seattle Police Department to do so, even though the evidence of Boeing misconduct being the sole driver of my contacts with the press was inescapable. Why did he not do so? Were his hands as dirty as Boeing’s obviously were at that point in his career? Possibly. But it was perhaps the fact he knew Boeing’s “hands” were so dirty that led him to not thusly “bite” the dirty hands that would feed his campaign, and quench his thirst for more absolute power. Thusly not “biting” Boeing’s dirty “hands” was not a hard choice for one of the ethics of Dan Satterberg, no doubt.

Now that Dan Satterberg has “absolute power” to define the meaning of the term “justice” in King County even to mean its opposite meaning, he is no doubt also probably one of the chief advocates to make the King County Prosecutor a non-partisan office, and even for public financing of elections. Now that he is in the office, doing so would only help quench his thirst for ever more “absolute power” if he succeeds in keeping his offices base corruption out of the press.

Boeing is perhaps the entity with the most dirty hands ever to report a crime in King County, albeit perhaps a murderer has before similarly reported the jaywalking of someone who was on their way to the police department or prosecutor to report that same murder’s crimes, and the police or prosecutor also similarly ignored the murderers crimes and threw the book at the jaywalker instead with a vengeance, perhaps having also had their “decisionmaking” on the subject also “helped along” by the murderer giving them cash to do so. I do not mean to insinuate what I did in contacting the press as a whistle-blower was akin to “jaywalking,” or that Boeing’s ongoing criminality is akin to murder. The many people that have died because of the corruption I steadfastly tried to end are not “murders,” to my knowledge, as I have no evidence the many corrupt Boeing managers I witnessed the actions of that made those deaths much, much more likely and directly resulted in many of them actually wanted them to die and watched the coverages of plane crashes on CNN with glee anticipating a new order shortly from the affected airline. I believe they are 1st degree manslaughter, however. As for the crimes I reported to the press in Boeing giving Stealth Bomber technology to proscribed countries by stealing it from the true owners for use on commercial airplanes, that is a crime that is potentially even graver for our country in terms of consquences than the complex fraud in Boeing quality assurance that I tried to end, and that Dan Satterberg intentionally overlooked for the benefit of his campaign contributor extroardinaire Boeing.

But the party Dan Satterberg belongs to has, of late, not been at all about protecting the average person, no matter how well Dan Satterberg makes himself seem otherwise by prominently posting what he is doing to help the needy (and ensure his re-election) on the King County Prosecutor’s website. It has instead been about increasing the number of needy and outsourcing their jobs. To that end, Boeing is a good complement to Satterberg, as Boeing has outsourced untold thousands of jobs and likes to take credit for the charitable giving of their relatively few remaining employees. To his credit, I don’t believe Dan Satterberg has outsourced any King County Prosecutor’s office jobs yet, whatever he feels about the wisdom of Boeing’s own outsourcing. Maybe he believes, as his kind of Republican, that Boeing’s outsourcing is good because it allows them extra money with which to contribute to his campaign, but, alas, the subject of outsourcing is not related to the issue at hand.

That Dan Satterberg has been the willing puppet of the company that still most arrogantly flouts the law is not surprising, if you know his actions well, as I do. Satterberg will protect Boeing misconduct as long as he is in office, just as he has up until now. In that, Boeing’s contributions and Boeing contributions funneled through other companies have been a relatively cheap bargain. After all, what price would you put on your freedom from prosecution if you were a Boeing white collar criminal? I don’t presume to know the status of Boeing’s actions in other counties to similarly ensure corrupt actors in high offices. Maybe, as most corrupt Boeing white collar criminals work and live in King County, Boeing has not had to get their hands even more dirty elsewhere in the state than King County.

Even though Dan Satterberg has a Complex Fraud department that would presumably be ideal in prosecuting Boeing’s complex frauds (both the ones I witnessed and others), he has so far used it to arrogantly protect Boeing’s own complex frauds and to cover up any evidence of Boeing’s complex frauds. It has therefor been turned 180 degrees from its supposed duty, just as the word “justice” has also been defiled under him.

I wish I and others could truthfully report that Dan Satterberg was not a discredit to the restoration of the Republican Party’s good name. To that end, Dan Satterberg defiles his own party’s name just as much as Blagovich does to the Democrats. Blagovich tried to sell an office to the highest bidder, whereas Satterberg sells King County “justice” thusly to the highest bidder.

Maybe one day the King County Prosecutor’s office will one day be inhabited by people at least as ethical as I am. Until Dan Satterberg leaves office, however, the King County Prosecutor’s office can never aspire to be anywhere near being that ethical.

Perhaps those of you that are not abhorred by Dan Satterberg’s selling of justice to the highest bidder can be disgusted by the amount of King County and Seattle Police Department money Satterberg wasted in his attempts to ruin my life, imprison me, and send a message to other potential Boeing whistle-blowers out there. I wish, too, that Dan Satterberg had spent that money where it could have been much more ethically and effectively spent, in the prosecutions of the numerous white collar criminals at Boeing, some of whom Dan Satterberg worked together with much too closely and for far too long in order to ensure my unfair trial and imprisonment that was apparently not unfair enough for both Satterberg and Boeing.


It was sad that Dan Satterberg used the good name Norm Maleng had built up for the department in furthering efforts by Boeing to retaliate against me for brazenly trying to have them imprisoned by having me imprisoned instead. Surely the jury would have begun deliberations far more in my favor if Satterberg had not tried to have his direct reports stack the deck against a fair trial in my case in order to ensure the bidding of his chief campaign contributors was done to their satisfaction. Unfortunately a large part of a jury pool will assume you are guilty as charged even before the trial begins, especially if the public has a high opinion of the office, as they did until Dan Satterberg defiled the office Norm Maleng had built, apparently with Satterberg asleep near the wheel during that time. They will skip the hard job of deliberations depending on what they think of the ethics of the prosecutor’s office. Sadly, Dan Satterberg used that hard won name Norm Maleng had built for the department in unethical if not illegal efforts to ensure his election by pleasing the most well-heeled campaign contributors to be had in the state.

Of course Perkins Coie for the most part was just doing their job in protecting the white collar criminals at Boeing that Boeing retained them to protect. I do have a problem. However, with one of their partners using a personal friendship with a US Attorney to get that US Attorney to try to bluff me into signing a Perkins Coie/Boeing written/approved “continuance for dismissal.” I also have a problem with them currying favor with Dan Satterberg for naked business interests on the part of their clients. I think they should rely on the validity of their legal arguments rather than personal and campaign favor induced favor with government officials in order to do their work. But maybe they know something I don’t know. Perhaps Boeing’s retention of their firm is contingent on such highly questionable behavior on Boeing’s behalf that occurred in my case. It would be nice if my case was the last that used such “who you know” and “how much money do you have” favor to circumvent the wheels of justice.

Even though incredible amounts of pressure were brought to bear on Dan Satterberg by Boeing in order to get him to do the wrong thing doesn’t mean he should have succumbed to that pressure and did the wrong thing, as he did.

No doubt I would have willingly submitted to trial for any tiny “jaywalking” type law I might have conceivably broken if Boeing’s white collar criminals were also tried just as heartily for the serious and systemic crimes they are and were involved in that have cost lives and weakened our national security in the name of “maximizing profitability.” Such would be a small sacrifice to give and a “price to pay” in order to achieve real justice for the many people and citizens harmed by Boeing so grievously. I would have been honored to be tried by a prosecutor’s office with anywhere near such minimal ethics. However, the stacked and totally unfair trial Dan Satterberg subjected me to while turning a blind eye to the real white collar crimes at Boeing that the Complex Fraud unit was obviously the perfectly named unit to try cannot, and should not, be forgiven. Voters should not let themselves be bamboozled again by the campaign favors Dan Satterberg has accepted from companies that have committed far more serious crimes against justice than I was even unfairly accused of.

Tomorrow, at 12 PM EST, begins a new era in America, and a time for renewed hope that our government will begin to work for all Americans again, and not just for the moneyed elite and corporations for which it was ran in the last eight dark years for accountability and ethics in government.

While it may be too late to resurrect our country or even the entire planet from the mismanagement of the last eight years, it will no doubt be possible to make fundamental reforms, some almost immediately, once 12 PM EST comes, in some of our most important institutions in government.

While the list of government agencies that need to be totally reformed and pointed from their assigned duties of the last eight years of destroying their effectiveness and instilling bias within, to restoring their effectiveness and the lack of such bias is long, I have my favorites on that long list that I believe should be placed at the top of the list of those agencies that are in the most urgent need of fundamental reforms back to their true missions.

And, as you likely guessed if you follow my blogs, the specific areas in government that are most in need of reform, in my opinion, are the FAA, and the enabler of FAA misconduct, the DOT/OIG.

This informed opinion is based upon the systemic corruption I witnessed in those parts of the DOT during my extensive contacts with them in futile efforts to get them to do even their most basic of functions in protecting public safety by ensuring laws and regulations are followed by transport aircraft manufacturers, namely Boeing, by oversight of Boeing, and in the DOT/OIG’s case, oversight of the FAA itself.

The corruption at Boeing that I went to the FAA in futile efforts to end was corruption that I had witnessed first hand extensively. The highest levels of Boeing management were unwilling to end Boeing’s systemic breaking of laws and regulations meant to ensure the quality, safety, and reliability of commercial and military aircraft. So, it was not then too surprising that my portion of the vast matrix of Boeing management I reported to never reformed itself, as it was just doing the illegal bidding of “Boeing Legal,” the Chief Counsel of which I had the displeasure of interfacing with. After all, correcting a serious problem that places untold numbers of lives at unknown levels of extra risk would be an admission that Boeing had such a problem in the first place, if you place your “I’m a corrupt Boeing manager” hat on, something I have had to do far too often in my efforts to understand their “thinking” and reform them to some minimal level of responsibility in those key positions of Boeing management whose actions or inactions affect the quality, safety, and reliability of Boeing military and transport aircraft. They couldn’t afford that admission, and they certainly decided that they couldn’t afford to actually start inspecting production of its commercial and military aircraft per even the most minimal interpretations of laws, regulations, and procedures. Thankfully, we don’t live in a totally Adam Smith-like country, so I had a place to go when “market-based” Boeing “internal controls” intentionally failed to address this ethical, legal, and safety related problem. Going to the FAA was the only the only place I could have gone in this situation, except perhaps for the case of going directly to the FBI. However, I think I made the correct logical choice in going to the FAA first at the time, as the safety related aspects of Boeing’s corruption were more pressing to address than the criminal nature of its management, I believed.

Unfortunately the FAA was and is a place where Boeing had already bought and paid for those in key management positions, and they intentionally flubbed the investigation rather than investigated an area of Boeing management corruption that they knew they were just as culpable in abetting themselves. To risk investigating the corruption in Boeing management that was so well documented in my report to the FAA would have necessarily resulted in them having to risk investigation of their own internal corruption as well, opening the possibility of themselves doing time for their own crimes, as they and Boeing were “working together” in said corruption. They weren’t about to let that happen. They would have cut off any hopes of getting their “quid pro quo” cushy jobs at Boeing or industry associations Boeing belonged to and/or ran by their doing so. Tom McSweeney’s hiring by Boeing and Marion Blakely’s hiring by an industry association are such cases that they wanted to emulate for their own personal gain. Reform at the FAA is many years past due. Thankfully, not the “entire apple” is rotten. There are those in the FAA, especially at the lower ranks that see the corruption in their management and in Boeing’s management that also see the urgent need for reform so that they can begin to do their safety critical jobs without any reprisal for doing so. However, the problem will be in finding out which are the bad “apples” and which are the good. We can’t just throw them in water and see which “drown” and which “swim,” ala apples, to separate the corrupt from the good. To do that will require investigation, although, as a first step, all management who have not demonstrated independence from their corrupt FAA management could be replaced ASAP with great accuracy as to whom is corrupt and who is not. Firing such corrupt FAA management wouldn’t even be required short term. That would require too much time to investigate, time that passengers and crew on commercial and military aircraft affected by this corruption do not have. Paying a corrupt FAA manager to stay home and replacing them would be the best interim option, just as paying a bad mechanic to stay home would be better than allowing them work on an airplane.

But, what was even more disappointing than a corrupt FAA was a corrupt DOT/OIG that refuses to even investigate to end that corruption. Their failure proved to me the systemic nature of our government’s corruption at a time when other government agency corruption was beginning to become well known. Reform to get the “bad apples” out of that portion of the DOT will be also needed as well to ensure the FAA is reformed and stays reformed.

The DOT/OIG uses the same methods as Boeing and the FAA do to keep corruption in place—intentionally incompetent investigations, as well as “investigations” that do find some of the problems, however they only correct a few of them over such a long time scale totally opposed to the real urgency of the problem for the public, they end up with ineffective fixes for even those few problems. And those are just some of the more “ethical” ways such corruption is abetted rather than ended.

Such has become the state of our government—where even our most critical agencies to the safety of our and the world’s citizens are so corrupted.

Thankfully, such corruption has not caused as many deaths as it could have, albeit each life it has cost has an immeasurable value. Pure luck may be part of that, and who knows, maybe the prayers of those on defective commercial and military aircraft are being answered. Flaming commercial aircraft that only explode when the last passenger or crew member gets off of them. Certainly that wasn’t because of any action by corrupt Boeing or DOT management. Indeed, the aircraft’s explosion in the first place was because of their intentional “oversight” of the most basic laws, regulations, and procedures.

Tomorrow’s inauguration brings new hope that these and other instances of corruption affecting so many people’s lives will start to be addressed with the urgency and sincerity required. While there is a hopefully slim chance that the new administration will be just as far in bed with Boeing than the last one was as far as corruption goes, I see that as an unlikely outcome, no matter how arrogantly Boeing tries to continue its corruption past noon, EST, tomorrow.

It is good that President-Elect Obama is so popular and so many people are so optimistic he will succeed where others have failed. Hopefully the mood is suitably dark tomorrow in the Boeing management offices in Chicago and elsewhere. Maybe new accountability in government will bring accountability in Boeing management that so far has escaped any for its, in many instances, intentional mismanagement.

It has only been through the efforts of people like me that the current Boeing management has not succeeded in totally destroying the company thus far. Per Boeing’s belief (rightful or not), I am the sole reason what little of the 787 is built by Boeing is assembled in “non-right to work” state Washington. If not for me, hear Boeing tell it, 787s, if they were to deliver to customers some day, they would be delivered from South Carolina, instead of Washington. Maybe one day Boeing management will come to terms with reality and thank me for purportedly “making them” site the 787 in Washington, when they consider what even more a debacle it would have been had it been sited entirely in South Carolina. But, likely not. Arrogance knows no bounds, and Boeing, the self-described most arrogant company on the face of the entire planet, may arrogantly assume they would have succeeded where they so far have failed if thusly given more “bullets” to shoot their “feet” with. But, alas, to the current management at Boeing, failure has been redefined as “success,” so the meanings of those terms are in effect meaningless at Boeing, as they are interchanged in meaning at will.

I watched CNN for the first time in a while today, and to hear it reported that Obama is so popular and people are so optimistic as far as his ability to make changes for the better goes is heartening. I have been paying too much attention to the eighteen or so percent who think the glass is half or less empty. I have never before seen such a miserable group of people so deluded and so hateful. Maybe they have been neutered for the last eight years by themselves by not having the ability to critique the current president they support, and they are relishing returning to the mindlessly partisan attacks on the president of the Clinton years. But some of them have broken new ground, it seems. I don’t remember a previous president being called anything as abhorrent as the “N” word or losers of an election calling for the “A” word (assassination), like I’ve seen from them lately. A new low in “political discourse,” I believe. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is the same 18 percent that still support the current president that are taking part in these inhuman attacks on the next president, I believe. That the vast majority of Americans don’t believe as they believe is great news, indeed.

The time for mindless partisan and racist attacks is as long past as it’s ever been. Even some Republicans are hoping Obama succeeds, smartly, while others still seek to mindlessly blow holes in the “bottom of the boat” in which we all live. While some will still labor to undermine our government from without come noon EST tomorrow, hopefully both parties will work together to make government accountable, effective, and ethical from within. And that is especially urgent as noted for reform of the FAA and DOT/OIG.

While corruption still thrives within Boeing and the FAA today, tomorrow, literally, begins the hope of reform of the FAA and its overseer, and thereby hope that at least the corruption in Boeing QA management will at long last be brought to an end. While I began that effort years before both Boeing and the government were willing to address it, I hope that others will now help see it through for the safety of everyone in this new era of reform now upon us.

The last eight years were an experiment gone horribly wrong. Repealing or otherwise not enforcing regulations (as in the case of the corrupt FAA) is neither good for business nor good for people. The foolish ignore history, and the reasons regulations were put in place, and, if put in charge, doom us all to repeat that history again. Corporations are free to flout laws and regulations at will, however, they should not escape the consequences for doing so, especially when those laws and regulations were put in place to protect lives, and especially when whistleblowers report that corruption to the relevant government agency. So far Boeing’s management has escaped those consequences by being “too big to regulate” and by having its arrogance rewarded rather than punished. An obvious fix to this problem would be to require Boeing to break up into companies that are not “too big to regulate” and are small enough to never again become so arrogant. You would think that a corporation could be reformed without such drastic action. Sadly, corruption is so ingrained in Boeing’s current management that it may not be able to be cut out like the cancer it is for the company. Incompetent and corrupt Boeing managers have shown a great unwillingness to be held accountable for any of their actions, and so far have placed their own personal interests in maintaining their jobs at Boeing above the interests of the corporation as a whole. Meanwhile, it seems that more and more people are becoming convinced that most of the current Boeing management should not be allowed to manage any company other than one whose products are no more complex to produce and no more safety critical than products like “post-it” notes are with each new 787 delay or other similar announcement.

Tomorrow begins a new era in the hope to end such corporate and government corruption. That is reason enough to celebrate.

Gerald Eastman

P.S.: Don't forget to write www.change.gov as GFS suggests as noted in my previous blog

I've decided to pass on some very good advice from a great whistleblower supporter, G. Florence Scott (GFS).

GFS is urging that any former or prospective whistleblowers and their supporters write to the incoming Obama Administration ASAP with their views on what needs to be done to ensure that whistleblowers, (who are often now harassed, fired, transferred, and/or otherwise retaliated against for raising valid issues), are protected from such retaliation, and the issues they report are adequately investigated.

Often the act of reporting the misconduct of companies or government agencies brings about swift and relentless retaliation against a whistleblower. Additionally, these organizations often succeed in covering up the misconduct reported, and many are so arrogant that they also ensure that the misconduct itself can continue in the process. Ultimately, many such corrupt organizations never have to face justice for these actions, or justice for the misconduct itself.

Please follow the advice of G. Florence Scott below (after my introduction), and go to www.change.gov and post your letter advocating reforms that will offer whistleblowers greater protection from retaliation, as well as calling for real changes to ensure that those whistleblowers’ messages are indeed heard and acted upon by the relevant investigative/enforcement authority.

If you want to skip my "whistleblower biased" introduction and go straight to GFS's urgent message, just start reading past the asterisks below.

Due to the American public sweeping in change on a vast scale last November, it seems clear the public is as tired of government and industry corruption as me. And many have been learning as I did that the corruption often proves to be between government officials and officials of companies in industry. It is no wonder in this environment that it has been so difficult for whistleblowers.

A new largely Democratic Congress will be sworn in two days from now, on January 6th, followed two weeks later by the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. I know that the Obama Transition Team has made an unprecedented attempt to seek advice from as many people as possible during the transition, in order to make informed decisions on the best policy choices for the American people that reflect their values and views. And that is why GFS has called for you to write to President-Elect Obama and Vice President-Elect Biden in support of whistleblowers at www.change.gov.

While corruption and incompetence (purposeful or not) in the outgoing Bush administration was obviously a main reason behind the electoral landslide that swept Barack Obama and other Democrats to victory, it is clear that this is not a one party problem. A corrupt governor in Illinois is doing his best to show that even usually (relatively) corruption adverse Democrats have their problem members as well. Having said that, even considering the Blagovich aberration, a fundamental difference can be seen in how each party handles such politicians in their party. One party is disgusted by them and wants them gone from their party and from office ASAP. The other is, unfortunately, more tolerant of such "pay to play" politics as well as other forms of official misconduct. While no party is blameless when it comes to corruption, the public has spoken. And at least in the case of Federal offices, the public has shown they prefer politicians who want to work much more for the average citizen, rather than those that serve almost exclusively the companies that employ them.

Most sensible people, including Republicans, can now see that the "trickle down" theory didn't really work, or at least it didn't mean exactly what it was purported to mean, and presidential candidate Obama rightly called it by labeling the current financial crisis in America "the final verdict of history" on the failed experiment of "trickle-down" economics.

The wealth didn't trickle down as promised. The greedy that unfortunately comprise a large portion of the wealthy elite of this country wanted more, more, and ever more, even after the overly generous tax cuts the Bush administration gifted them. They put their windfall profits from tax cuts and other Bush Administration largess into tax shelters overseas. They outsourced formerly US jobs overseas to "maximize profitability" (as Boeing called it); they busted or prevented the formation of unions to decrease wages or outsourced formerly union jobs to the lowest non-union bidder, among many other tactics, to ensure as little wealth as possible trickled down into average US taxpayer's hands.

I do not mean to vilify all people with wealth. There are many good people among the wealthy—especially those who in their view have accumulated more than enough wealth and want to give some large portion of it back to the least fortunate among us, and those that have accumulated wealth but are not economically ignorant like many of their greedy neighbors in their communities of the ultra rich. These economically astute people among the wealthy realize that the U.S. economy does need workers with enough disposable income to be enthusiastic consumers of their products in order for their businesses to remain successful and thrive. They know that they cannot enhance their profitability long term and ensure their continued wealth by killing well-paying U.S. jobs.

So, while the economic crisis did not help Republicans who wanted to control the Presidency longer, it was not the main reason for their rejection. Corruption played a key role as well. People realized they could no longer trust the current administration to tell the truth. An almost daily stream of revelations of past or new corruption has bombarded us. DOJ US Attorneys and career DOJ and other agency officials appointed or chosen for party and ideological bent, and an anti-US law enforcement bias have created an atmosphere where violation of laws and ethics have been the rule rather than the exception. Lies abound about the justifications for a costly war in terms of lives and dollars. Industry has been allowed to rewrite the regulations for their own industry's oversight and/or they wield disproportionate influence over those in government who have the power to change or remove regulations that affect their industry. New regulation has become politically impossible to achieve. Real controls and regulations have become a mere shadow of what they should be; those that remain on the books are not being enforced. Whole agencies appear to be awash in corruption, even critical agencies, like the DOJ and DOT/FAA, are as corrupt as the worst companies they are supposed to oversee, as well as investigate and prosecute, if necessary.

The public obviously made an informed choice this time. They didn't allow fear of terrorism to overcome their ability to reason. They wanted more accountability, and much less corrupt government and politicians. I believe they have made the correct choice. However, as we have seen, power (independent or uncaring of the will of the people) ultimately will corrupt, and corrupt absolutely.

That is where we come in. While some very bad actors were removed from office this last round of elections by will of the people, we must ensure that both the new and the seasoned politicians govern with our advice and consent, with our best interests in mind—not just catering to the interests of those who are wealthy enough to hire lobbyists.

We must lobby our government ourselves on what we want our government to do for us and what values we want our government to govern with. And that is why GFS's call to write change.gov about the critical whistleblower reforms needed is such a great idea. We need to tell them early and often what we, the people, desire and demand from our leaders.

I believe the whistleblower issue is one of the most important, whichever side of the political aisle you're on, and irrespective of my personal experiences as a whistleblower. There are hundreds or thousands of whistleblowers like me, many of whom could not be tarred and discredited by the corrupt company or agencies they reported, as I was. And there are thousands of prospective whistleblowers in the wings because of the actions of ne'er-do well corrupt management of agencies or companies like Boeing's, who have kept silent until now because corrupt management of agencies and corporations have been so successful in engaging in retaliation against both high and low profile whistleblowers over the past several years of de facto government of, by, and for corporations. (See my website and blog for specifics on these egregious behaviors.) Your letter supporting reforms to protect both government and industry whistleblowers from retaliation and put real penalties in place for retaliation committed against whistleblowers is one of the best areas in which you can advise the incoming Obama administration. (See one example letter below.)

Everyone, even "common-sensical" Republicans, should write that believes in a government accountable to everyone.

Whistleblowers are in essence the conscience of a company or government. When a company or government does not listen to whistleblowers, and all too commonly, even retaliates against whistleblowers, then that company or government is operating without a conscience. In essence, a company or government that does not listen to whistleblowers is the very definition of a corrupt organization—a company or government that has decided it won't have a conscience and that it doesn't have to obey the rules. And in extreme cases, such corrupt organizations attempt to "kill" the whistleblower (their "conscience") via retaliation against them. These hostile actions toward the unwanted conscience (whistleblowers) intentionally send a message to every other prospective whistleblower that organization has.

Such retaliation is the "cancer" that destroys totally any meaningful existence of the organization's "conscience," often, ultimately, with disastrous consequences for that organization. Think about it. Had the multiple whistleblowers in the Bush administration been listened to and had their reports been adequately investigated and acted upon per laws and regulations, the administration would have not embarked on many of the actions that cost their party control of the White House and resulted in increased Democratic majorities in Congress.

Republican control of the White House and Congress has shown us the dangers of one party control that seemingly only cares about public input come election time. That is another reason that we, the people, are taking a much more active role in our government this time around while the Republican party regroups, hopefully becoming a party more representative of the average American's interests and less beholden to special interests running the government instead. (Even though my current party affiliation is perhaps too well demonstrated here, even I will change parties if power ultimately corrupts my current party more than the alternative party.)

Please write to the Obama administration as GFS did to ensure whistleblower support is a key issue in their policymaking. The future of a government of, by, and for the people by politicians on both sides of the aisle is at stake. We have seen what happens to our economic interests when special interests rule the day, and government does not hear our voices. They are often, unfortunately, interests that are not in the best interests of the people of the "Main Street" we've heard mentioned so often lately. Calling for the protection of whistleblowers from retaliation is one of the best things we can do to ensure our government and industry do what's best for all as incorporated in our laws and regulations, as opposed to doing what is best for just the pocketbooks of the managers of those organizations that have "cut out" any vestige of a conscience via whistleblower retaliation.

Please follow GFS's wonderful example of what a good citizen can do to effect positive change for whistleblowers and the organizations they are trying to save via their whistleblowing, as noted below. Real protections for whistleblowers will force organizations to face problems and do the right thing rather than sweeping them under the rug and "killing" the messenger.

Gerald Eastman

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You may send letters of information and concern to the Obama-Biden offices of President and Vice President Elects: http://change.gov

You also may view reader questions and take part in a ranking of importance of questions on this site, as well as submit questions of your own for the incoming administration.

Below is an example letter, this one about protecting federal employees/whistleblowers.

Be empowered. Stand up and take action! -GFS

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January 4, 2009

Dear President-Elect Obama and Vice-President-Elect Biden:

I recently received an article titled "Obama Faces Legacy of Lawlessness at Justice" by Daphne Eviatar, The Washington Independent. This article is a must read for anyone who has noted the increasingly evident lack of vigor in the Justice Department and the malfeasance demonstrated in meeting the missions of the various agencies and departments. The anonymous federal government investigator who sent it to me gave me permission to pass his comments along to interested readers. He stated:

"G. Florence-
Excellent article about Lawlessness at Justice. Many politicians have talked, and talked and talked for the past eight years about the injustices of the Bush administration. And, dare I say almost all, have backed away from any meaningful confrontation with the Bush Administration.

We all know the story and the legacy of the corruption rampant throughout Bush's administration. Some of us have experienced it firsthand! For those of us that have, our lives and careers have been trampled upon. For those of us approaching retirement age, there will be no recouping from that damage – the damage is done, and we will continue to suffer into retirement through lost jobs, lost promotions, lost opportunities, lost wages and lost retirements. For those of us that have served under and been punished under the Bush administration – enough talk by politicians! We need to see some justice and some action by those politicians supposedly serving the people of this great nation.

How does this new administration propose to extricate the damage and toll to those public servants and people's lives and careers that have been destroyed by the Bush administration?"

There are many federal employees who feel the same (as this anonymous federal government investigator does).

I hear from some of them due to my blogs for and about whistleblowers (or those who are labeled whistleblowers for trying to ethically do the jobs they were hired to do). You have never heard of most of these people. And the majority you probably never will hear about.

Few whistleblower situations actually are made public in the media. And unless you know one very well, personally, few federal employees or whistleblowers will volunteer the details of their personal nightmare, for fear of more retribution or loss of job, career and retirement. For that reason, the majority of whistleblowers or would-be whistleblowers, though they lurk about websites that post information of interest and use to them, do not ever leave comments, even anonymously. And due to the many challenges to any kind of privacy online and over land and wireless communications systems as a part of increased "spying" on the American Public that the past eight years has brought about, I do not blame them. The extreme corruption, excesses and greed exhibited by members and associates of the Bush Administration are leaving our government at an all time low. It will not be a clear field for the new administration. Even now, just days before the change of administrations, the outgoing one seeks to hobble the incoming one.

So this will be a major challenge for the new Obama-Biden administration. There are a large number of predominantly silent people out there watching and waiting to see what will be done to establish a system which respects those who try to stand up to wrong doing, those who feel integrity is an important part of the oath they took when beginning the adventure that was to be their career federal job, those who hold their responsibility to uphold the United States Constitution and laws above all else. Who will stand up for these courageous federal employees who serve as prosecuting attorneys, investigators, security specialists, contracting officers, and all manner of oversight of government business as well as of contracting of companies to the federal government? How and when will full protections and rights be firmly put into place which will allow them safety and dignity as they do their jobs without fear of retribution and destruction of their careers and lives?

Another career Federal Employee commented last night:

"If the new administration expects would-be whistleblowers to disclose violations of law and danger to public safety and national security, it should give immediate relief to the current whistleblowers who are enduring constant subtle retaliation while at their current job, resigned under duress, or were fired."

I ask that the Obama –Biden Team take definitive action on this problem and come forth with clear policy and a plan to assure protection and assistance for those loyal federal employees who have been trying to do their jobs and have been pounded into the ground for doing so.

Sincerely,

G. Florence Scott

Just over two years ago, on August 1st, 2006, Jim McNerney, CEO of Boeing, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) concerning the Boeing Global Settlement Agreement between the Justice Department and Boeing that settled the Boeing Tanker scandal and the Boeing theft and use of competition sensitive EELV bid data from Lockheed Martin to rig their bid and win the EELV competition for a relative pittance compared to what the DOJ career attorneys had wanted before they were overruled by Boeing friendly higher-ups at the DOJ.

Although he was obligated to tell the truth before the committee, he did not--especially at the point in the hearing in which he answered a question posed by John Warner, Chairman of the SASC at the time, concerning the existance of protections for whistleblowers at Boeing.

McNerney then lied a string of lies that any whistleblower at Boeing (or most likely, a whistleblower fired from Boeing like me, as whistleblowers are an endangered species and fair game until extinct at Boeing as soon as they out themselves as such to Boeing management) would be astounded that he would dare lie.

(Incidentally, Paul McNulty, the Deputy Attorney General who testified for the agreement just before McNerney testified that day, later resigned in disgrace from his job after being caught perjuring himself during testimony on the U.S. Attorney firing scandal before another committee of Congress. McNerney, however, is still Boeing CEO after arrogantly misleading Congress during the August 1st, 2006, SASC GSA hearing regarding the state of Boeing ethics programs and treatment of whistleblowers.)

The noted part of the hearing dealing with whistleblowers at Boeing is the only part of the hearing in my letter sent to every member of the SASC committee before the hearing that appears to have been read by any member of the committee at all, in the form of Senator Warner's question to McNerney. You can read my letters to the SASC concerning the GSA on my website.

Bonnie Soodik, at the time the head of the Boeing "Office of Internal Governance" (which, to whistleblowers like me, is an office akin to what the Gestapo was to anyone who opposed the Nazis) was also at the hearing.

But Doug Bain, former Chief Counsel of Boeing who personally saw to it I was retaliated against for my whistleblowing as one of his last acts at Boeing along with settling the GSA with the DOJ, wasn't there, though his replacement was. What should have been a lambasting of Boeing, however, turned out to be just a back slapping meeting all around. That is, when Boeing wasn't lying about its ethics program and whistleblower "protections."

View the below video of just one part of McNerney’s factually challenged testimony on that day before Congress and read my comments denoting the “factual errors” within it after it:



Click this link to download and view a small media file of the noted portion of Boeing CEO McNerney's testimony to Congress that makes a mockery of the truth regarding Boeing's true treatment of whistleblowers.

If you need to install RealPlayer, please click here.


Now that you have watched the video, I’ll point out where most of the mistruths are in Mr. McNerney’s portion of testimony to Congress in the video (my comments about the testimony are in parenthesis within it below) As you can see, they are numerous, indeed:


SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN WARNER:

I listened carefully, and it may well be that you covered this, but I'd like to focus on it.

We have learned through experience in our federal government problems (happen?) and we have instituted a whistleblower -- actually, it's a federal statute. And carefully in there is protection for any retaliation or reprisal.

I didn't hear as crisply as I'd like to what you have as a component of this overall and very impressive program you laid out (of) that tried and, I think, tested concept.

(Senator John Warner, who was chairman of the SASC at the time of this hearing, having to give up the chairmanship some four months later due to the Democrat’s winning control of the Senate in the 2006 elections, is one of the best Republicans in Congress. He possesses a code of honor and integrity many Republican lawmakers lost long ago due to the fact they let power corrupt them, and corrupt them nearly absolutely. But even a Republican with the stature of Warner has problems, as shown in this hearing.

Republicans, by the very platform they all rule by, share one “pair of pants” with business—especially powerful corporations like Boeing. So, they are limited in what they can say or do against even knowingly corrupt corporations, since being “Siamese twins” with them, they will kill themselves and their ideals of government by, for, and of business if they are too harsh with industry and investigate corrupt corporations such as Boeing in an unbiased manner and let the chips fall where they may.

Even Senator Warner however participates in the worst partisanship in the Senate most of the time with his votes and in preventing bills from coming to a vote of the senate by supporting his Republican leadership’s many filibusters of bills in misguided support of business concerns (real or imagined) over the common good (what is good for business and workers).

John McCain (one of the few SASC members to even show up for this hearing) deserved much credit at one time for being an exception to this rule in the case of his investigation into Boeing and Air Force misconduct. Sadly, it was a just a relatively small “maverick” phase in his Senate career and he was not consistent in it.

Even though he asked some of the tougher questions during this hearing, he participated in the back slapping all around as well, and was not as tough by far as he should have been. Sadly, McCain had to suck up again to the corrupt “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” ethos between the Republican party and the worst and most arrogant in industry in order to win the nomination and get the resources with which to run his campaign for president.

Tellingly, he made an “error” in his first debate with Obama when mentioning the 6.9 billion dollars he saved the taxpayers by killing the first tanker deal by mentioning Boeing by name during his boast about it. However, he did not make the same “mistake” during the second and third debates when making the same statement—he made a point not to mention Boeing in relation to the nameless tanker contract he said he killed thereby “saving” taxpayers 6.9 billion dollars during those last two debates. He apparently made a decision that to do so would hurt his electoral chances. But I digress.

I hope even you Republicans out there can appreciate why someone as anti-corporate corruption as I am does not favor Republicans in their present form.

But unfortunately, the Democrats have not been as good as they should have been by far in standing up against corporate corruption, but as a majority of Americans have finally decided (quoting a famous movie line), they are now “our only hope” in arresting corporate fraud and the havoc it has wreaked across our economy.

Senator Warner’s “this overall and very impressive program” comment during his question and other comments during even the tougher portion of his questioning belie his bias toward even corporations still as ethically challenged as Boeing, even at their lowest points, at which Boeing was during this hearing.)

MCNERNEY: We try to make as broad a set of provisions and mechanics available to our people, who want to bring forward problems that they've identified in the company.

Just as background, we get 12,000 inquiries a year into our ethics hotline, so to speak, which can be reached either via the telephone or via the Web. Most of these are inquiries about issues, how to do the right thing, information to help them do their jobs better. Some are serious matters.

(And there lies the rub and one of the huge and fatal flaws of the “Boeing Ethics Hotline” program Mr. McNerney is describing trying (and succeeding) to dodge Senator Warner’s real question: Boeing decides themselves what is a “serious matter.” And, as you might guess, what Boeing decides is a “serious matter” and therefore acts in some half or no hearted way to stop is a very small subset of the true number of “serious matters” reported to it through this system. I should know. When a company decides that inspectors rollerstamping mandatory inspections off on inspections of safety critical products like commercial and military airplanes is not a “serious matter,” then you can see the integrity the “Boeing Ethics” system really has, or, more accurately, does not have.)

WARNER: And that 12,000 is internal, or…?

MCNERNEY: Internal.

WARNER: Internal to the company?

(The reason Senator Warner seems surprised by McNerney’s answer to his question is that Senator Warner wasn’t asking about internal whistlblowers, quite obviously.

In the common usage of the term, “whistleblower” is almost always someone who has gone outside the company or government agency they work for once all internal efforts to get the company or agency to do the right thing have failed.

“Whistleblower” is not a term that characterizes people who do the right thing in a company and bring problems to their management’s attention who then fixes those problems. They are not “whistleblowers.” They are just good employees.

When they actually become a true whistleblower is when they bring problems or corruption to the attention of management and that management decides not to correct the problem, as they are fine with the problem or corruption continuing, and in many cases, are the root cause of the corruption themselves. Then they go outside the company to the relevant enforcement agency, law enforcement organization, and/or the press if government agencies are also compromised. That is what happened to me and many other real whistleblowers.

Mr. McNerney simply totally dodges the question by talking about internal controls Boeing implemented as part of the façade of reaction to being caught in the EELV and Tanker scandals with their “hand in the cookie jar.” Unfortunately Senator Warner does not dare to correct Mr. McNerney’s intentional dodge of the question or ask about what he was truly asking about at the end of McNerney’s “answer”—controls Boeing has or does not have in place for actual whistleblowers.)

MCNERNEY: This is Boeing people often asking questions, trying to figure out how to do the right thing.

WARNER: And that's been in place how long?

MCNERNEY: That's been in place since two years, I believe. At least since '03.

But the point is that some of these are serious matters, occasionally anonymous. And one of the mechanisms we have that directly bears on your question, Mr. Chairman, is we have a tracking system that we implement after someone comes forward. And they're often concerned about some kind of retaliation or intimidation post the disclosure. And we've got an actual tracking system where we work with people, regularly check in with them, and ask them in their view, are they experiencing any kind of retaliation?
And we track for a long time.

(This is the biggest lie in this portion of Mr. McNerney’s testimony. I have more experience than most with Boeing’s internal and external “tracking system” of retaliation against people that use the “ethics hotline” and whistleblowers like me who reported Boeing corruption to the relevant governmental oversight agency, and in my experience, no such tracking system existed at the time of Mr. McNerney’s statement, and I was an employee of Boeing for all but just over two months before Mr. McNerney made this ludicrous statement.

There is, however, a “tracking system” of sorts in place, although it is antithetical to the one Mr. McNerney describes. Most “callers” to the ethics hotline and actual whistleblowers of Boeing misconduct to government agencies are tracked with a tracking system, however that tracking system is much like the automated tracking system on an anti-aircraft or anti-missile gun, its sole purpose to dish out retaliation to those who report misconduct (especially management misconduct) to Boeing’s “ethics hotline,” or dare to become real whistleblowers and go outside the corrupt company in search of real action to stem the fraud they witnessed within the company.

Take my case for example. I was promised no retaliation against me by the Chief Counsel of Boeing, Doug Bain, after I had gone to the FAA and his office to stop the rampant fraud I witnessed in Boeing Quality Assurance Management. Did that mean I was not retaliated against? No. When I was retaliated against, did Boeing’s Chief Counsel stop it when I reported it? Also no. He just showed up at my workplace to ensure such retaliation was “on track.” And all of this was prior to my later contacts with reporters to go public with the story of Boeing Quality Assurance Management fraud that Boeing ostensibly fired me for.

My two contacts with the ethics department of Boeing were actually because of retaliation by Boeing management at my workplace against me for my whistleblowing and for my trying to do my job of inspection with some minimal level of integrity against management’s intimidation that I do otherwise.

That in itself proves no such tracking system existed, for they would have purportedly have contacted me before I endured enough harassment and retaliation in order to have no choice but contact them about it.

So, if you can’t believe Boeing’s Chief Counsel or CEO, who can you trust at the company? The answer is obvious.)

And that has been…And everybody in the company knows we do that.

(Another lie. How can everyone at Boeing know such a tracking system as Mr. McNerney describes exists when it clearly does not exist as he stated, and the vast majority of people at Boeing never heard of it? Especially people like me who went through both avenues to submit reports—both the “Boeing Ethics hotline (email actually, in my case)” and to the Boeing Legal department’s highest official?

Simply telling someone reporting ethical misconduct that retaliation won’t be tolerated, and then not only tolerating it, but helping initiate it and turning a blind eye to it as happened in my few cases is not such a “tracking system.”)

So that has been very helpful to get at that issue.

(Another untruth. I told you this portion of his testimony was riddled with them, one on top of another, in this case. How can something be helpful in alleviating people’s fears of retaliation if it does not exist?

They neither “regularly check in with them” nor do they “track for a long time” as McNerney prevaricated.

They do however have a system in which they track what they view as problematic “do gooders” that come forward and report things to “Boeing Ethics” or Boeing Legal, but that system is for ensuring retaliation happens, not the opposite as Mr. McNerney disingenuously told the committee.)

WARNER: And could you address the protection of any reprisal against him, or adverse to...

MCNERNEY: Well, that is a punishable offense in and of itself at our company -- anybody caught even looking like they're performing some kind of reprisal against somebody. It's a very serious matter. And that is an offense in and of itself.

(Another whopper! Of course, if he is speaking about an hourly worker performing a reprisal against another hourly worker he may be correct in a few cases, as hourly or non-management salaried workers are viewed as expendable by management at Boeing.

However, in the context of the question and answer, Mr. McNerney’s answer is another fabrication, for in one vast area of ethical complaints to “Boeing Ethics,” in fact the opposite is true—in the most common form of ethical violation at Boeing as shown by the very violations of the law Mr. McNerney sat down before the committee to obfuscate—ethical violations by Boeing management.

There is a modus operandi in “Boeing Ethics” that treats Boeing management as untouchable when it comes to ethical violations, especially for the most common allegations against Boeing management—those made by some non-management employee reporting directly or indirectly to that manager.

Any such person reporting Boeing management misconduct to “Boeing Ethics” had better have an unquestionable videotape of the reported manager’s misconduct, because the “rules of evidence” are vastly different for managers and non-managers who have ethical complaints against them. No such “gotcha on tape” evidence would be required for a non-manager to be investigated and pilloried for an alleged ethical breach, however, nothing lesser would be needed to make an ethical complaint against a Boeing manager “stick.” Never mind that any employee possessing such videotaped or taped evidence would be fired by Boeing and not allowed to present it because such taping is against company policy (for good reason, if you are one of the many unethical Boeing managers).

So Boeing management is pretty much teflon coated when it comes to ethical complaints, contrary to Mr. McNerney’s fabrication in this Congressional hearing of a “Boeing ethics system” that ignores such “hierarchy.” Nothing could be further from the truth at Boeing, and Mr. McNerney would have known that at the time of this testimony.

Sure, there are limited exceptions where management can be brought down by an ethical complaint from a junior employee. One of the very few would be when the manager’s misconduct threatens to cost the company much more in court if the company does not get rid of the manager when someone complains of their misconduct.

This applies most commonly in the case of when a manager is accused of sexual harassment. Every other type of harassment of employees is tolerated well at Boeing, it seems, but with a valid sexual harassment claim, the company will get rid of the manager to reduce its exposure to lawsuit in court. This is because of the success of (mainly women, of course) pressing for and winning huge judgements in court against companies who tolerate such behavior by management.

Even in these situations, however, Boeing management is treated with kid gloves by their management. They are usually given the most advantagous exit from the company they could hope for under such a situation. Many are given the option to simply retire rather than be fired for their documented sexual harassment.

I know of two such cases out of the three I “witnessed” over the years at Boeing.

The first one was when I was on the A-6 Re-wing project and my general supervisor was walked in on “boffing” a sealer lady on top of a desk by one of his managers who was checking out what I believe were noises he heard from the unoccupied office floor above the office area for the program. He walked into the office and his manager stopped and glanced at him for a moment, them went back to his “business” of “boffing” the sealer employee on the desk.

I’m not sure who made the complaint, the manager who walked in or the sealer, but shortly after the news of what had happened flowed through the small factory the general supervisor was given the choice of retiring or being fired. He retired, of course.

The other incident was with two managers at the Propulsion Systems Division of Boeing where I last worked. Two manufacturing managers had (I don’t know why the employee was with them, but it was supposedly business related) stopped by a strip joint while commuting from plant to plant with this woman employee who was a decade or decades their junior.

The woman (hourly) employee complained, and the General Supervisor involved was allowed to retire. Many people on the production floor enjoyed his departure as he was a very unliked character of questionable ethics before the strip club affair.

The first line manager involved apparently did not have the time to retire, so he was allowed to take a lead hourly position at Boeing in another area he may or may have not qualified to “bump back into” from his management job.

So Boeing is fairly consistent in my experience in giving sexual harassers “retirement” or alternate job “parachutes” rather than the firings hourly or salaried employees would have gotten in the same circumstances.

“Hierarchy free” “Boeing Ethics” program it is anything but.

There are even exceptions to this "rule," however, depending on which manager you are and who are your other friends in management.

Sometimes Boeing managers are let off scott free for such misconduct while the “sexually harassed” woman is the one fired.

One such incident happened in Everett when I worked there. A manager was “boffing” a woman sealer in a car in the parking lot outside the Everett plant. The bouncing motion of the car caught the attention of Boeing security, who found the two in a compromising position.

What was the result of the “Boeing Ethics” investigation? Hard to believe, unless you know the hierarchical “Boeing Ethics” system like subject matter experts like I do, but the sealer woman was fired because the manager was having sex with her in the car outside of her established break or lunch times. Since there is no established breaks or lunch times for Boeing managers, the manager was allowed to walk away scott free from the incident!

In fact, since Boeing management did not want to apparently have his well known actions to be a distraction in his area at the time of the incident, he gained a coveted management job on the flightline when they transferred him to another area to make him less known for his exploits. That is where I saw him, when I was working on the 777 PED (Passenger Entry Door) crew on the flightline.

So, management for the most part protects their own, and the “Boeing Ethics” program participates in that protection on behalf of management contrary to what Mr. McNerney testified to Congress here.)

WARNER: Was that laid out in this plan as a part of the plan?

MCNERNEY: Yes, it is. That is...

(Another fabrication.)

WARNER: And are you able to supply that to the committee?

MCNERNEY: Yes.

(Oops! I wonder what they had to gin up to submit to the committee on the issue? Unfortunately, due to such records not being available publicly without an act of Congress, we may never know. Since Senator Warner did not correct Mr. McNerney’s dodging of his question, it is doubtful that anything supplied to the committee in response to his request would be closely scrutinized even if it was in fact produced.)

WARNER: I think it would be helpful if it could be made part of the record.

MCNERNEY: OK.

WARNER: Thank you.

End of portion of testimony.

So, Mr. McNerney's fabrications of the effectiveness and even existence of the "Boeing Ethics Program" before congress aside (making him much like his two predecessor CEOs at Boeing), the above gives you some insight into the real "Boeing Ethics" program and how it serves to protect Boeing mismanagement and corruption and retaliate against those that dare to report misconduct in Boeing management through this corrupt "ethics" program. When even your own ethics program is corrupt, it is no huge surprise to find out the management of the company is similarly corrupt.

Now free of the "requirement" to have the facade of an ethics program as described above as part of the GSA as the GSA is now expired, "Boeing Ethics," at the behest of still corrupt Boeing management, is more free than ever to push the envelope and become the most ethically challenged "ethics program" at any corporation (if they weren't before the GSA expired), if they so choose.

Stockholders of Boeing don't have much farther to go than here to find out why management at Boeing is so broken and is so very unlikely to correct its own actions that will place the whole company at risk when oversight returns soon to Washington, D.C.

The following email was to Tim Vranna, who at the time was the managing "Senior Aviation Safety Inspector" who worked just under Kevin Mullin, at the time the FAA's Northwest Regional Manufacturing Inspection District Office Manager. "Ms. Lipski," was Vi Lipski, at the time Manager of the Transport Airplane Directorate, above Mr. Mullin.


From: GERRY EASTMAN
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 11:14 PM
To: tim.vranna@faa.gov
Subject: Letter request.


Dear Tim,

During our last phone conversation you requested a copy of the letter I received from FAA headquarters. You will find it attached. The signature on the letter is of Margaret Gilligan, Deputy Associate Administrator for Regulation & Certification, for Nicholas A. Sabatini, Associate Administrator for Regulation & Certification (see website http://www.faa.gov/avr/ if you have not associated with them in the past and you would like more information on their piece of the FAA pie). As you can see, the issue to be investigated is "your concerns of the (sic) Quality Assurance Management at the Boeing Company Commercial Airplane Group." In my letter to Administrator Garvey, I made it very clear that my concerns were about the Quality Assurance Management corruption at BCAG, not so much the havoc that corruption has caused to the BCAG Quality System, although that damage too must be documented and remedied, along with the management corruption that caused it. Hopefully your investigation is following those lines. My meeting with Tom Nakamichi on 1/11 and my email to Soheila Khosravani, among many other things in my report bear out that my allegations you confirmed were not simple oversights by an incompetent management, but were intentional acts in violation of the law to "create more value" (make more money for Boeing's bottom line by defrauding our customers and you) via noncompliance with inspection requirements to be performed on our safety critical products.

Regarding our last phone conversation, I still reiterate that I do not believe any sabotage of our Quality System by BCAG QA Management should be considered a "trade secret" and therefore kept out of your report to me. Crimes cna never be considered "trade secrets" in my view. You, the FAA, has the power to make both Airbus and Boeing play to the same rules--and those rules should be all above board and non-criminal. And they should especially not be criminal behavior, as I have detailed in my report, that results in possible past and future loss of many lives. I reiterate my staunch belief that individuals must pay heavy criminal and civil penalties for such QA Management corruption. That is the only way, If BCAG QA Management is left in place, to make QA Managers think twice before they similarly sabotage the QA System for profit again.

I realize it is difficult to investigate the very people that you may have had very amiable personal relationships with before my report. It is difficult to put aside feelings that "such a nice person" could have been lying to you all of the time when they told you they were doing their best to fix your concerns, when in reality they were dragging their feet on reforms while other QA management was at work trying to hobble the BCAG QA System further for "value." But past relationships must be put aside and the pure, hard data, like I have presented to you, looked at to find the truth in your investigation. I know how hard that can be. I had not wanted to believe the reality I have lived every day in the corrupt BCAG Quality System until Tom thrust that System in my face to view in all its unholy glory.

You might have wondered what experiences I have had while at Flight Test, across the street from PSD. You might have wondered if being in a different area of the BCAG QA System might have changed my belief, drawn from past personal experiences, that the BCAG QA System's corruption is systemic, across all of BCAG. If I was asked, "Has your past experience of systemic BCAG Quality System corruption been debunked by your transfer to Flight Test Inspection," I would not be able to say no, but I would have to say "hell no!" My desk is stationed in the Flight Test Lead office, a perfect position to keep track of the health of the Flight Test Quality System. And what I have heard in my short time there is not pretty, in the least. This is only the few things I can remember off the top of my head:

1. Engine runs are not being added to the Engine Logs (in effect, Boeing is lying about how much time is on the engines because of this). It is not a great amount of time, I guess, that an engine is tested on the ground, but I'm sure it adds up, especially on long test programs, or troubleshooting or testing engines on production aircraft (737 N2 tone comes to mind).

2. Shop routinely begins work before removals, work sheets, and NCM NCOs are written. When I said something about some struts I heard had been worked on without paper to authorize the work, an Airworthiness Inspector in the opposite cubicle said "Get over it. This is Flight Test."

3. When NT386 came in from Renton, apparently the pilots left the antiskid system off, burning up some tires on landing. During the troubleshooting and rework of that, a rudder message appeared on the maintenance display. It was checked out, and found to be a "hand tight" bolt in the rudder PCU system. I believe they also found a similar hand tight bolt in the Aileron system, also, on the supposedly fully inspected, flyable airplane. I know, and you probably know, that this is not the first instance of its kind on Renton roller stamped products.

4. (Name), Airworthiness Inspector said that his counterparts in Everett were allowing shop to do work without work sheets, and that "they would really be fucked" (his words) if you audited them.

5. You'd think these Airworthiness Inspectors would know what the hell they were doing, considering almost all of them have at least fifteen years with the Company. However, it seems not a day goes by when I don't hear them arguing between each other or among shifts as to what is the correct way to do their jobs, which they should know by now. It's the same old thing Tom told us about--"crews tearing themselves apart," with the inspectors who still believe in their jobs (like me) and the inspectors who don't care how or if they do their jobs (the ones that QA management is on the side of) sparring, with QA Management rooting for the "roller stamper" team. Do they step in and help the good QA in the fight as they ethically should? Hell no. They laugh on the sidelines as they watch inspectors like me get beaten up. A day or two ago it was the laughably simple subject of whether to write NCRs or REOs on BBJs. They kept arguing whether it was a delivered airplane or not. Eventually they found out it was still a Boeing airplane, even if BBJ had possession of it. So they had been writing REOs on BBJs apparently for quite some time, in error, as it was not a repair station airplane yet.

6. The QA Supervisor's main function at Flight Test seems to be to make sure there is not too many inspectors per airplane, which is the QA Supervisor's main trick to keep inspectors from really inspecting the airplane. They always seem shorthanded, and they loan out inspectors to Everett or Spares at the earliest opportunity to keep their headcount down. Of course, as always, inspection supervision is only concerned about how many hours an inspector spends on an airplane, not whether the inspector has enough time to inspect the jobs adequately. Once again, the are not doing their jobs, but only their bosses, Manufacturing Supervision's jobs, in only ensuring hourly beancount forecasts are not exceeded, and not ensuring their real jobs, ensuring Quality, are done. Like production QA, Flight Test QA spends more time trying to get rid of their inspectors than ensuring they do their jobs. Like self inspection in production QA, Flight Test QA Management is spending their time formulating schemes to get rid of the useless roller stamping inspectors after they trained them that way. It's something called "AML," and I don't know much about it.

7. (Name), A 34 year Boeing employee constantly gripes about what QA management is doing to the former integrity of the QA department, lamenting that "they have taken our power away to do anything." I guess he means that QA has become nothing more that a shell department that only looks like it is overseeing the work of Manufacturing. We have no power to actually do our jobs. I know that well. You know what happened to me when I tried to do my job. He is a mine of information.

8. Wonder of wonders! It is so uncanny how PSD was just a perfect example of the corruption of the rest of BCAG's Quality System. Guess what? The first two, and so far the only (they haven't called me back again yet (funny, that)) composite repair I have inspected at NBF (North Boeing Field) resulted in me having to write two FRR supplements for, guess what--insufficient cure of the parts! They were undercooked a full 30 minutes I believe, among other defects in the cure, and I could tell by the composite technician's reaction that noone had written up a discrepant cure before, just like at PSD!

So, I guess I'll leave it at that for now. As I said in my original 49 page report, I could go on forever about such items if I really tried to remember everything that happened recently, but I'll stop for now.

Feel free to call me on the cell phone, or any of the multiple other ways I gave you to contact me. I hope, in our last phone conversation, that your only investigating my "specific allegations" that were contrary to a specific FAA requirement did not mean you were giving yourself an out from investigating the items in my report that may require extra effort on your part to investigate. Remember, even though the FAA perhaps does not require a reallocation letter on engines or Unit Issue items, the FAA does require that we build our airplanes per type design, which lack of such reallocation letters would jeopardize. Also, I think I, and the public, deserve an unbiased and thorough investigation regardless of what you think of me or BCAG QA Managers personally. Let the chips fall where they may. The days of promoting the U.S Aviation industry are over. Safety of the public is now our chief concern.

In a meeting a few months ago at PSD, Tom said that you were close to pulling our PC. That kind of shocked me, as it obviously had nothing to do with my report at that time. I trust, if that was true, that with your investigation of my report, that such drastic action can at least be done in PSD's case while you are investigating the rest of BCAG with what you have learned in your investigation to confirm it's systemic proportions. Shutting PSD down for several weeks while it's Quality System is reconstructed from scratch and put under ethical management will definitely get the attention of the entire BCAG Management team, especially if you do not allow them to shift the work elsewhere.

I still think I deserve the chance to review Scott Peterson's responses to your letter confirming items in my report to give my opinion on the validity and appropriateness of their accusations/corrective actions. Please let me know when that opportunity comes. Please share this with Ms. Lipski as you think appropriate.

Sincerely,

Gerry Eastman